MLB's decision to pull All Star Game from Atlanta 'crushing' for small businesses

Georgia businesses owners are speaking out against the MLB’s "crushing" decision to move the All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado, said their decision will harm businesses that are trying to rebuild after statewide economic shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Monday, Tudy Rodney of Rodney’s Jamaican Soul Food, whose restaurant is near the Truist Park, told FOX 5 Atlanta's "Good Day Atlanta" that the MLB’s decision to move to Colorado will make his business "suffer."

"We're trying to build back from a pandemic that happened last year, and something like this is not good for business," said Rodney. "Rodney’s will suffer."

Alfredo Ortiz, Job Creators Network CEO, appeared on Fox and Friends Monday and said the MLB’s decision leaves him uneasy.

"They're barely making it out of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now they’re facing under the Biden administration potentially higher taxes, higher minimum wage, more red tape and regulations, and now this,” said Ortiz.

According to Ortiz, the estimated cost of pulling the All-Star Game out of Atlanta was "upwards of $100 million."

"A lot of these were minority-owned businesses that were really looking forward (to) and desperately needed this kind of revenue in stream,” said Ortiz. "And all because, quite frankly, there was a misinterpretation or misunderstanding or, quite frankly, just an outright lie of the law that was passed here in Georgia on voting rights."

"And, the bottom line is that, that law — it just makes it easy to vote and hard to cheat," added Ortiz.

The MLB’s decision to relocate the All-Star Game to Colorado was announced on Monday, a move that was seen as wildly hypocritical considering the MLB pulled out of Atlanta in protest of Georgia's elections reform bill but chose Colorado—a state that has stricter voter laws than Georgia, and is exceedingly less diverse.